Climate Science Glossary

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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Climate contradiction: less snow, more blizzards

But the answer lies in atmospheric physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold, and dump, more moisture, snow experts say. And two soon-to-be-published studies demonstrate how there can be more giant blizzards yet less snow overall each year. Projections are that that’s likely to continue with man-made global warming.

Exploring climate resilience and energy sense

I visited Los Angeles this week to discuss new approaches to environmental communication with students and faculty at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability of the University of California, Los Angeles. I also joined two of the university’s professors — the climate scientist Alex Hall and the environmental historian Jon Christensen — for an onstage Zócalo Public Square discussion of this question: “Should we just adapt to climate change?” (The answer of course is…drumroll…no.)

It's not easy being green in Canada

Canada’s police and security agencies think citizens concerned about the environment are threats to national security, and some are under surveillance, documents reveal.

The RCMP, the national police force, and Canada’s spy agency CSIS are increasingly conflating terrorism and extremism with peaceful citizens exercising their democratic rights to organise petitions, protest and question government policies, said Jeffrey Monaghan, a researcher with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Nepali farmers abandon rice as monsoon shifts

For most of his adult life, Bidur Basnet has planted paddy rice each monsoon season on his five hectares of mountain land. But in the last five years, as monsoon rains have grown increasingly unreliable, he has had to abandon the country’s staple crop.

New climate goals for Europe

Green campaigners pressed the case for an ambitious new decade of energy and environment policy on Wednesday as the European Commission kicked off debate on 2030 goals, seeking to balance economic reality with climate concerns.

Palm oil expansion threatens Congo Basin forests

Industrial cultivation of oil palm has "wreaked havoc" on rainforests and forest peoples in Southeast Asia and now threatens to do the same in the Congo Basin, a report from the Rainforest Foundation UK warned on Thursday.

The politics of climate change: adapt and avert

While thousands converged on Washington to rally for climate change, the U.S. government was building a levee to protect the National Mall against Katrina-like flooding. Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to adapt while also averting total disaster.

Understanding extreme weather in an era of climate change

The US has clearly seen some pretty extreme weather events over the last year. These events have caused both billions of dollars in property damage and endless arguments over how much can be attributed to climate change. Even as scientists work on the problem of attribution, the public has often made up its mind on what's to blame.

To try to bring some sanity to the discussion, the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science hosted a session on US weather extremes. Although there were a variety of talks, three presentations nicely captured the challenges: one on the state of the US climate, another on a recent climate event, and a third on trying to convey all of this to the public.

Unlocking the conspiracy mind-set

When I first met the NASA climate researcher Gavin Schmidt a few years ago, we discussed the proliferation of material on the Internet attacking mainstream climate science. I asked him whether he thought climate contrarians were flirting with conspiracy theory in their views.

“Flirting?” he said. “No. They’ve already had conspiracy theory out on a hot date, and now it’s the morning after and they’re sitting up in bed, having coffee.”

Why Republicans should embrace climate change

We have reached the point where every rational person who believes in making decisions based on science and available data should, if not fully believe that human beings are warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, at least recognize that this is what the data seem to suggest and that it is what the vast majority of scientists who study weather believe is the case.

Comments

As the Premier of NSW said, don't ask him about the effects of climate change when the state is busy being hit with record floods and fire damage...

That's something remarkable, becaues I don't consider Barry O'Farrell as silly as the quote would indicate. Does anyone know more of that and can provide a context?

BTW, I notice all of the articles quoted this week are bad news: FF export increasing, monsoons shifting, tech troubles implementing solar panels etc. I have an impression we making no progress at all in combatting GW as there is not a single piece of positive news about it...

Something has always puzzled me about the right wing and especially the extreme right wing such as the Tea Baggers. For the most part they profess to be religious. So they believe that God gave us dominion over the fowl in the air, the fish in the sea and the beasts in the field. God, like a good dad has passed on the family business to his kids. I would have thought they would be in the forefront of the movement to preserve dad's creation. Instead they seem to have a "drill baby drill" mentality. Go figure.

william, there are many religious people who DO take the viewpoint that they should be 'good shepherds' of the Earth. However, those are not the sort you usually find in the Tea Party, or even the modern GOP. Those groups embody a different mindset which holds that God put the resources of the Earth here for our use so that we could 'be fruitful and multiply' and thus any argument of a need for 'conservation' is contrary to God's instructions.

Which is my root problem with the concept of religion in general. Once you introduce a requirement to 'take this Truth on faith', no matter how it starts out, it can change into virtually anything... so virtually anything can become 'Divine Truth'.

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